Above the Caption

“Back Where You First Began”

IUP Music Theater, directed by Sarah Mantel, performed selections from The Merry Widow at IUP Plays Pittsburgh in November. The annual Heinz Hall event showcases the musical talents of IUP students and faculty members.

Click on any image to enlarge it. Photo: Keith Boyer.

Photo: Bill Hamilton

Jazz hand

Award-winning composer, arranger, and conductor Marvin Hamlisch came to campus in October as the seventeenth recipient of the Helwig Distinguished Artist Award. The award was created by Florence Helwig in honor of her late husband, Wilfred E. Helwig. Hamlisch conducted an open rehearsal with members of the IUP Jazz Ensemble, with whom he later performed three big-band arrangements as part of his appearance in Fisher Auditorium.

Back Home in Indiana

“Breathless”

Jessica Bush Warman ’03 is the author of the young adult novel Breathless, which was published last summer. She talked about the novel and about publishing in general at a campus session last fall sponsored by IUP Women’s Studies and the English Department.

Photo: Keith Boyer.

Photo: Keith Boyer.

Making it Possible

The author of this year’s Common Freshman Reader, Bill Strickland visited the Indiana campus in November. He talked to the English classes of faculty members Barbara Kraszewski and Sue Johnson, toured College of Fine Arts facilities, and presented a well-attended lecture in Fisher Auditorium. Strickland is president and CEO of Pittsburgh’s Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild and Bidwell Training Center. His book is Make the Impossible Possible.

Enlightened

“The government should explain itself to the people,” said Bob Woodward, the 2009 speaker in IUP’s First Commonwealth Endowed Lecture series. Woodward spoke in Fisher Auditorium in November. An associate editor of the Washington Post, he has won two Pulitzer prizes, including one for his reporting of the Watergate scandal. “Hate was the poison that destroyed [Nixon] and his presidency,” he said. While President Gerald Ford’s subsequent pardon of Nixon “looked like the highest corruption,” to Woodward it “was actually the highest act of courage.” Asked what threat should most concern Americans, he replied, “Secret government. Democracies die in darkness.”

Photo: Keith Boyer.

Photo: Keith Boyer.

Namesake

Gealy Wallwork stands in front of the IUP residence hall that since December has borne his name. A university trustee and chair of the Administration and Finance Committee for nearly two decades, he has played an important role in many of the Residential Revival and other campus building projects. In 2006, Wallwork received the IUP President’s Medal of Distinction. A Kittanning resident, he worked for more than forty years in operation and management positions in the mining business, from mine level through corporate headquarters. He retired as president and chief executive officer of the Arthur T. Walker Estate Corporation, a holding company for the Shawmut Companies. Wallwork Hall was previously called Sutton Suites.